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6/05/2013

Guest post: My child is a screamer.

I have a few words to share with my fellow Mamas at the (in)able & (in)courage blog today about being the adoptive mother to a special little boy. Here's a preview:

It’s not clear exactly what happened to our youngest son before he
joined our family, but a special recipe of neglect, trauma and abuse
has left our nine year old functioning at the developmental level of a
four year old, both cognitively and socially. He doesn’t do crowds, he
doesn’t do stores, and he doesn’t like it when life deviates from his
picture schedule.
As his adoptive mother I’m new to this whole world of special needs
parenting. It took me longer than I’d like to admit to figure out that
my new son’s temper tantrums were fear based, not orneriness. I’m still
sort of trying to figure out what will send my son into panic mode.
It’d be so much nicer if my son would come to me 10 minutes before he
had a meltdown to tell me “Mother, I’m simply over stimulated by the
options at the grocery store today. If you would like to avoid having
me throw bananas at you, you’d be wise to take me home soon.”
Yeah, that doesn’t happen.

So what happens when my son does start throwing produce at me? And what do we all have to learn from these delightful little exchanges? Read the rest here